Microsoft Corp. sued Salesforce.com Inc. yesterday, accusing the company of infringing nine patents for ways to make software more efficient.

The complaint targets the customer-relationship management software that is the hallmark of Salesforce.com’s business. It seeks a court order that would prevent the San Francisco-based company from providing features that Microsoft claims it invented.

Salesforce.com, founded in 1999, sells subscriptions to Internet business software that runs marketing campaigns and tracks sales leads. It competes against Microsoft’s Dynamics programs and “has profited through infringement of the Microsoft patents-in-suit,” according to the complaint, filed in federal court in Seattle.

“More and more, we’re seeing Dynamics compete with Salesforce in deals,” said Ray Wang, an analyst with Altimeter Group in San Mateo, California. “Long term, Salesforce and Microsoft are on a collision course for all enterprise software.”

Movie Gallery Inc., the owner of struggling movie rental chain Hollywood Video, is planning to close its remaining stores and liquidate as consumers are increasingly get movies through the mail, vending machines and high-speed Internet connections.

The No. 2 rental chain behind Blockbuster Inc. filed a notice with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond late last week that it will terminate its business operations after defaulting on a loan from one of its creditors.

An agreement filed with the court sais the move to close more than 1,900 remaining stores is in the "best interests" of the company and its creditors. The agreement does not specify a time line. It must be approved by a bankruptcy judge.

Phone calls to Movie Gallery and an attorney representing the company were not immediately returned.

The company, based in Wilsonville, Ore., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February, buckling under the competitive pressure from movies-by-mail service Netflix Inc., DVD kiosk company Redbox and delivery of movies and TV shows over the Internet.

Former Qwest Communications International Inc. CEO Joe Nacchio is set to appear in federal court in Denver to say whether he wants to waive his right to attend his re-sentencing hearings.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger wants to see Nacchio in person Tuesday before allowing him to skip hearings in June where she will recalculate his sentence for insider trading convictions.

An appeals court ruled that Nacchio's original sentence of six years in prison, plus $71 million in fines and forfeitures, was too harsh.

Nacchio has started serving his sentence at a prison in Pennsylvania. Online federal prison records show he was moved to a low-security facility in Englewood, Colo., before the hearing Tuesday.

Lorillard, the maker of Newport, Maverick and True cigarettes, says its first-quarter profit climbed 26 percent as domestic wholesale shipments and average prices grew.

The nation's third-biggest cigarette maker said higher federal excise taxes on smokes helped boost its revenue.

Lorillard said Monday its earnings rose to $232 million, or $1.50 per share, in the three months ended March 31. That's up from earnings of $184 million, or $1.09 a share, a year ago.

It says revenue climbed to $1.36 billion from $917 million as domestic wholesale shipments of discount brand Maverick grew 48.7 percent. Excluding federal excise taxes, revenue was $923 million partly on higher average prices. Wall Street predicted revenue of $802.7 million.

The Supreme Court is stepping into a legal fight over Omega's effort to stop Costco from offering the Swiss maker's watches for up to a third less than they cost elsewhere.

The case has important implications for discount sellers like Costco and Target as well as eBay, Amazon and other companies that form an estimated $58 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer.

The justices said Monday they will hear Costco's appeal of a lower court ruling that sided with Omega in its attempt to invoke U.S. copyright law to halt the discount sales. Omega owns a U.S. copyright on the Omega Globe Design symbol that is engraved on its watches at the time they are made.

The high court has previously ruled that copyright protections do not apply to goods made in the United States, sold abroad and then imported back into the country for resale. At issue in this case are items that are manufactured overseas, sold by their maker abroad and then brought back here for resale.

This means of purchase, importation and resale is sometimes called the secondary-goods or gray-goods market, and it is a big part of Costco's business.

BeBevCo announced today they have hired a new legal team: McMullen Associates LLC from Charlotte, North Carolina. McMullen Associates LLC is a Securities and Corporate Law Firm that specializes in Securities Regulation, Corporate Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Finance, Business Law, Private Placement Memorandums, Exchange Listings, Franchising, as well as all general securities law practice and corporate law matters. "After a five-hour meeting that included four of our staff and five of theirs, it was by far the most educational as well as convincing that McMullen Associates team of experts will get the job by helping us develop short and long term strategies to move BeBevCo along a path to the Bulletin boards and then on to the AMEX," said CEO Brian Weber.

About BeBevCo - BeBevCo (Bebida Beverages Company) develops, manufactures and markets several beverages including Koma Unwind "Chillaxation Drink ™," Koma Unwind Sugar-free "Chillaxation Drink ™" and Koma Unwind "Chillaxation Shot™" as well as Potencia Energy Drink and Potencia BLAST energy shot, Piranha Water.

Before a federal judge, Justice Department prosecutors will lay out the dirty laundry of the company best known for its elegant Mercedes-Benz autos: a pattern of bribery that for many decades has helped fuel the company's sales and illicitly added millions of dollars to its profits. As a result, the company has agreed to pay $185 million in fines.

According to court papers filed March 24, the company's board 11 years ago adopted an integrity code with anti-bribery provisions. The problem is, Daimler failed to enforce it; many Daimler executives actively resisted it, and improper payments continued until 2008.

The court papers provide a case study of how executives at one of the world's blue chip companies responded when governments said "no" to bribery.

Of course, Daimler, through its subsidiaries, is hardly the first corporate giant to be caught paying off foreign officials to get contracts.

In December 2008, for example, engineering company Siemens AG agreed to pay more than $1 billion in fines in Germany and the U.S. after being accused of bribing officials with suitcases stuffed with money.

Ten years earlier, Germany ratified an international anti-bribery agreement; an implementing law took effect in early 1999.